When storytelling meets Artificial Intelligence

For decades, development organizations have faced a difficult communications challenge: how do you attract attention to a crisis without reducing people to that crisis? Writes Udemma Chukwuma.

According to Nigerian development storyteller and creative advocate Valentine Onyeka Ogunaka, the answer may shape not only public opinion, but the future of artificial intelligence.

Speaking virtually at the Communications for a Better World conference which was a hybrid event in New York City , Ogunaka challenged communicators, journalists, humanitarian organizations, and development institutions to consider a question that extends well beyond fundraising campaigns and awareness drives:

“What happens when artificial intelligence learns about entire communities through narratives that focus primarily on crisis, dependency, and vulnerability?”

The question formed the basis of his presentation, which explored the growing relationship between development storytelling and emerging AI systems.

For decades, humanitarian campaigns and development communications have relied on powerful images and personal stories to mobilize support and resources. While these approaches have helped draw attention to important causes, Ogunaka argues they have also contributed to a narrow representation of many of the people they seek to help.

“When someone is introduced first as a refugee, a beneficiary, or a displaced person, we may unintentionally reduce a complete human being to a single circumstance,” he said. “The reality is that many of these individuals are also entrepreneurs, professionals, students, parents, creators, and community builders.”

According to Ogunaka, the rise of artificial intelligence changes the stakes of this conversation.

The reports, articles, profiles, images, and digital content produced today increasingly become part of the information ecosystem that machine learning systems analyze and learn from. If narratives repeatedly associate certain groups with helplessness, poverty, crisis, or dependency, there is a risk that those patterns may eventually be reinforced and reproduced through technology.

“People should not have to trade their dignity to be seen,” Ogunaka said. “Visibility matters, but the way we achieve it matters too.”

To address this challenge, Ogunaka introduced Framing for a Cause (FFAC), a storytelling framework developed through years of field documentation and engagement with displaced populations, migrants, refugees, and other vulnerable communities. Developed through his work with Ecrafti, the Abuja-based communications and social impact initiative he founded, the methodology encourages communicators to represent people through Identity, Agency, Contribution, and Possibility.

Rather than defining individuals solely through labels such as refugee, returnee, beneficiary, or internally displaced person, the framework seeks to foreground the fuller realities of human experience. It challenges communicators to move beyond documenting need alone and make room for resilience, capability, aspiration, and contribution.

“The issue is not whether stories of hardship should be told,” Ogunaka explained. “The issue is whether those stories reflect the full complexity of the people at their centre.”

Ogunaka believes communications professionals are becoming increasingly important contributors to conversations about ethical technology.

“Much of the discussion around AI focuses on engineers and policymakers,” he said. “But communicators are shaping the narratives that enter these systems. In many ways, the stories we publish today may influence how future technologies understand humanity.”

The framework forms part of a broader concept he describes as Development Narratives Diplomacy: the idea that storytelling is not merely a communications function, but a strategic force capable of influencing public understanding, institutional priorities, policy decisions, and increasingly, the technologies that help societies interpret information.

His remarks come at a time when governments, researchers, and technology companies are grappling with questions of AI fairness, representation, and responsible innovation. Ogunaka argues that one of the most overlooked aspects of the debate is the quality of the underlying human stories feeding modern information systems.

“It starts with how we see people,” he said. “If we can tell stories that acknowledge challenges while also recognizing dignity, capability, and potential, we create a more accurate picture of humanity for everyone, including the technologies we’re developing.”

As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly embedded in decision-making, information access, and public life, Ogunaka believes communicators have an opportunity, and a responsibility, to help shape a more inclusive future.

“Better technology begins with better human stories,” he said. “The future of ethical AI may depend not only on the quality of our algorithms, but on the quality of the narratives we leave behind.”

For Ogunaka, the question facing communicators today is no longer simply what stories people are hearing.

It is what stories machines are learning.

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